Dawn of the Lead

I’ve been working hard on the ship in the past few weeks, and it’s almost ready to paint. Here are the latest updates. I sadly forgot to take a lot of photos, but this should give you a fair idea.

I got to work on the ship’s hold. The key elements were stairs and something that I think was meant to represent a chest.

Click for a larger version

There was also a large, barred gate leading to another part of the hold. I decided to remove the door, leaving a very large doorway. The hole in the background is one of the ship’s toy functionalities, as there’s a matching piece that blows out when a button is pressed – a mechanism I left intact.

Click for a larger version

I went to work on the stairs and what I’ll now call the chest. I wanted the stairs to be usable in games, so I used plasticard and build a platform halfway down the stairs to allow me to place minis. The chest was given a very rough treatment, as my plans only involved covering it with planks.

Click for a larger version

Sadly, there are WIP pictures missing here, and I’ll just skip ahead to where the stairs and the chest are finished. You can see I also chopped down the pegs that were originally holding the ship’s toy cannon. As you can see I added some details to the stairs to make them look a bit nicer. I also added planking around the battery case for the same reason. As you can see, the whole thing has already been sprayed a glorious brown.

Click for a larger version

I gave the doorway a frame, but left it otherwise untouched. I figured the size makes it look like the ship is capable of taking in loads of cargo.

Click for a larger version

As you can see, the stairs can nicely accommodate a few pirates.

Click for a larger version

Apologies for the unusually poor quality of the photos, they’ve been hit with a fair amount of blur and excess lighting. The uneven, bleached look in some of the brown areas isn’t only due to lighting, however. I spray painted part of the ship during really humid weather, i.e. Finnish summer, so I got some of the lovely frosting that tends to happen. Luckily the brown paint it there primarily to serve as a basecoat, so no real harm done.

Here’s a final photo of the ship in its present state.

Click for a larger version

As crazy as it sounds, all I need to do is rough up the mizzenmast, add some planking to the forecastle and basecoat both, and I’m actually ready to start painting this thing. For the paint job I’m thinking of something similar to the one on this model of Bartholomew Roberts’ Royal Fortune, so burnt umber with a dash of red. Of course I want to throw in something a bit more extravagant, so you can be sure you’ll be seeing a lot of gilding as well. Getting there!

The ship project is my first time working with coffee stirrers. It’s immensely fun and satisfying work, as the perfectionist in my rejoices every time I manage to make a nice, fitting angle. On that note I present to you my latest work on my ship’s foredeck.

Click for a larger version

The foredeck isn’t a very large part. The deck planking had plenty of holes for screws in it, so I filled those with ProCreate putty. While they don’t look very nice, once painted they blend in quite well. The lattice hatch was designed to open and drop action figures down into the hold. As obviously I didn’t want that to happen to my miniatures, I glued it shut. While the hatch itself looked fairly nice, it looked weird situated sort of under the deck planking. I added a rim around it, and I think this improved its look a lot. It was the most difficult cutting work so far, so you can imagine how happy I was when everything finally fit into place. I added a decorative piece (the foremost plank) to cover up the cut off peg that originally locked the hatch in place. I liked the look of the hatch hinges, so I left them in place. The belaying pins at the base of the mast can be pressed for awesome sound effects, so they’ll definitely be left in place. With this part done, the foredeck only needs a little more planking work and two more screw holes filled (oh my, that sounded somewhat inappropriate). After that it’s a bit more work on the hold and that’s it. I’m actually finishing this thing!

In what has to be one of the most boring updates ever on this blog, I report that the main deck of my pirate ship has now been painted a flat brown. That’s it.

Click for a larger version

…ok, as an afterthought I added a before shot, showing the paneling I added to the rail. It still doesn’t make this post super interesting, but it’s something! The main thing I want to report is that the project is still going strong. I’m starting to surprise myself.